The present disclosure relates generally to transaction-based licensing and, more specifically, to implementing transaction-based licensing in a cloud computing system.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Organizations, regardless of size, rely upon access to information technology (IT) and data and services for their continued operation and success. A respective organization's IT infrastructure may have associated hardware resources (e.g. computing devices, load balancers, firewalls, switches, etc.) and software resources (e.g. productivity software, database applications, custom applications, and so forth). Over time, more and more organizations have turned to cloud computing approaches to supplement or enhance their IT infrastructure solutions.
Cloud computing relates to the sharing of computing resources that are generally accessed via the Internet. In particular, a cloud computing infrastructure allows users, such as individuals and/or enterprises, to access a shared pool of computing resources, such as servers, storage devices, networks, applications, and/or other computing based services. By doing so, users are able to access computing resources on demand that are located at remote locations, which resources may be used to perform a variety of computing functions (e.g., storing and/or processing large quantities of computing data). For enterprise and other organization users, cloud computing provides flexibility in accessing cloud computing resources without accruing large up-front costs, such as purchasing expensive network equipment or investing large amounts of time in establishing a private network infrastructure. Instead, by utilizing cloud computing resources, users are able redirect their resources to focus on their enterprise's core functions.
In certain situations, a client instance hosted by the cloud computing service may exchange information with external systems or services. For example, the client instance may make a HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request to an external server to request data for importation into a database associated with the client instance. The cloud computing service may be designed to track each outbound communication to the external system as a transaction. Additionally, the cloud computing service may have a licensing strategy in which each client instance is allotted a predetermined number of transactions based on a purchased licensing plan. As such, it is recognized that there is a need to provide an improved system for allotting and tracking transactions in a cloud computing service.